


and do we not live in dreams?

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, non consensual mind invasion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:05:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They capture Kylo Ren and all Rey wants to do is sleep, scrub the horror off her eyes, and try to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and do we not live in dreams?

They capture Kylo Ren and all Rey wants to do is sleep, scrub the horror off her eyes, and try to forget. But every time she shuts her eyes she can _feel_  them–Luke and the General twin beacons of grief in the hospital, and a frightened, furious presence emanating from Ren’s cell. She thinks about finding company instead of sleeping–but Finn’s off on some kind of secret mission, Chewie’s getting his vocal cords regrown after Phasma cut him up, and the thought of invading Luke and the General’s privacy more than she already is makes her miserable.   
  
She ends up stealing BB-8 from Commander Dameron, and sits beside it while it charges for the night, nodding off to the sound of it scolding her. She falls immediately into a dream: the old one, about the island, and the water, and the fragile knowledge that her family will be at the top of the cliff. She climbs and climbs and when she reaches the top, a monster she’s only glimpsed in Luke’s mind is waiting for her. He’s tall–taller than Ren, more solidly built, and the mask is different. His strength burns off him, ionizes the air, makes her breath come thick and sluggish in her lungs. “My son,” he says, in a mechanical voice, and Rey draws in a shaky breath, reaching for the lightsaber she doesn’t have.   
  
Darth Vader draws his saber, and it’s as red as Ren’s, as red as blood. “Come with me, child,” he says, and offers her his empty hand, commanding and nearly tender. “Let me teach you.”   
  
Rey is shaking too badly to fight, but she can still run. She races back down the stone cliff, lungs straining for air, the drop sickening on either side, the familiar threatening hum of the lightsaber following her.   
  
Eventually she becomes aware of someone running beside her, breath equally fast and frightened. She slows, and sees it’s Ren, pale and sweating with effort, his eyes wide with terror. He trips, falls to the ground, and she almost leaves him. Almost. “What are you doing here,” he pants, ignoring the hand she grudgingly offers him.   
  
“Get up,” she pleads, casting a glance over her shoulder–the shadow is gaining on them, red light creeping down the stairs.  
  
“This is my dream,” Ren says, still on his knees. At first she doesn’t understand–and then abruptly she does. This is her island, but this is not her fear. Darth Vader is not her monster. “You’re in my head,” Ren whispers, and he’s got that terrified look trained on her now, not the monster coming down the stairs. “Get  _out of my head_.”   
  
“I–I don’t know how to stop,” Rey stammers, pity fighting with disgust in her gut.   
  
“ _Get out_ ,” he says again, and he must do something because a second later she’s gasping for air on the floor in her quarters, covered in cold sweat, BB-8 making concerned noises over her.   
  
*   
  
She doesn’t tell Luke about the dream, and she can tell he’s too exhausted to look at her and just  _know_ , the way he sometimes does. He deserves a chance to grieve, she decides, and leaves him to the General.   
  
She doesn’t visit Ren, but all day she’s uncomfortably aware of his presence, shifting as she moves around the compound, like a spider lurking in the corner of her mind.   
  
That night, Ren comes into her dream. She knows right away that he’s not part of her organic psychic material. “Get out of  _my_ head,” she greets him, and he ignores that, takes an interested look around. They’re in a forest, unnaturally green and beautiful, and a few feet ahead of them Finn is humming, his arms full of scrap, good parts, stuff she can trade later. Her arms are full, too, and she sets some of it down to glare at Ren.   
  
“I hardly think we’re even,” Ren says, much more in control than he was the night before. “You saw one of my nightmares. This is–what is this?”   
  
“Nothing,” Rey says, defensive. “I just don’t want you poisoning my sleep.” The dream _is_  nothing special, but the feel of it is–nice. Comforting, like being with Finn. She doesn’t want a waste of oxygen like Ren to share in it.   
  
Ren doesn’t leave. “Get _out_ ,” she says, forcefully. Finn is about to turn around and show her a completely intact power converter that will earn them three half-portions, and she doesn’t want Ren to see it.   
  
”Can’t,” he says, sounding almost bored.   
  
”You mean  _won’t_ ,” Rey says between gritted teeth.   
  
”I mean can’t,” Ren says, and casts her a bitter look. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. I don’t know how it works any better than you do.”   
  
Rey isn’t sure she believes him, but there isn’t really anything she can do about it. She tries, fruitlessly, to wake herself up. Finn shows her the power converter, gives her a sweet and deeply embarrassing smile, and Ren makes a soft mocking sound in the back of his throat.   
  
“Shut up,” Rey snarls, and stalks off after Finn. Ren follows her for what feels like hours, until suddenly and completely he vanishes.   
  
*   
  
She wants to tell Luke, but there’s a small emergency on the nearby moon and he’s gone for hours, and then Finn calls to report to the General and she gets to talk to him for ten precious minutes before the connection dies, and tries to ignore the feeling of disgust emanating from the cells. She’s sure for those ten minutes she projects nothing but the complicated happiness of missing someone and trusting them to come back. She misses her chance to tell Luke, and that night she walks into Ren’s dream with resignation.   
  
He dreams about a desert at night, and it’s wildly inaccurate. Rey walks around critiquing everything that’s wrong–the sand should be  _cold_ , not hot, the buzzards should be asleep, not circling stupidly in the dark, that kind of cactus doesn’t grow in scrubland. Two sinister moons hang in the sky, but there’s a  _dat’leh_ scuttling between the dunes, and they’re allergic to moonlight.   
  
“This is Tattoine,” Ren says with a clenched jaw, staring into the bonfire that isn’t smoking at all. “This is where my grandfather grew up.”   
  
“Obviously you’ve never been to Tattoine,” Rey says, unimpressed.   
  
“You’ve never been to Tattoine either,” Ren hisses, and she’s about to say that his imagination is  _paltry_  when she notices the body in the flames.   
  
“Who’s in the fire?” she asks, and her voice only shakes a little.   
  
“Take a look,” Ren says lazily, and she steps a little closer to the heat. It’s Vader, black mask turning white as bone.   
  
“Your subconscious is _sick_ ,” she says, swallowing. “But I suppose you knew that already.”   
  
“I have his skull, you know,” Ren says. “Or. I had it. The last piece of my grandfather burned up with Starkiller Station. Something else to lay at your feet, I suppose.”   
  
“That’s disgusting,” Rey says, horrified. “Just his skull?”   
  
“You wouldn’t understand,” Ren tells her. His face is blank, the fire reflecting in his eyes.   
  
“Good,” Rey says with vehemence, and spits into the flames. A log shifts, something cracks with heat, and Vader’s mask splits apart, revealing the face beneath. Her heart gives a horrible lurch. It’s Han Solo’s face, Han Solo’s pyre. She draws in one trembling breath after another, and Ren steps closer in, at her side, looking down at his father.   
  
“Don’t cry,” he orders, brusque tone almost hiding the break in his voice. “He helped me. He died well. Better than he lived.”   
  
Rey stares at him–this pathetic man dreaming of the funeral he never gave his father, in a home that was never his, grieving the loss he carved into the world. She despises him so fiercely that it pulses in her chest, hatred fluttering like a bird between her ribs. 

  
“Good,” Ren says, soft, still looking at his father’s face. “Good.” 


End file.
